Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (75 page)

Christ has done for us all that needed to be done. He has done much more than we ever could have asked him to do or expected him to do. He has done more for us than we can understand even now that he has done it, and more than you and I are likely ever to understand even when our intellect shall have been developed and enlarged to the utmost degree before the eternal throne, for even there I do not think we shall ever fully know how much we owe to the friendship of our best Friend. However self-denying and tender other fiends may be, our Lord must ever stand at the head of the list, and we will not put a second there as worthy of any comparison with him.

Next, it is a very blessed thing to have the Lord Jesus Christ as having been our father's friend. There are some of us to whom this has been literally true for many generations. I suppose that there is some pride in being the fourteenth earl, or the tenth duke, or having a certain rank among men; but sometimes quietly to myself I glory in my pedigree, because I can trace the line of spiritual grace back as far as I can go to men who loved the Lord, and who, many of them, have preached his Word. Many of you I know in this church and in other churches have a glorious heraldry in the line of the Lord's nobles. It is true that some of you have had the great mercy of being taken like trees out of the desert and planted in the courts of our God, for which you may well be glad; but others of you are slips from vines that in their turn were slips from other vines, loved and cared for by the great Husbandman. You cannot tell how long this blessed succession has continued; your fathers and your fathers' fathers as far back as you can trace them were friends of Christ. Happy Ephraim, whose father Joseph had God with him! Happy Joseph, whose father Jacob saw God at Bethel! Happy Jacob, whose father Isaac walked in the fields and meditated in communion with Jehovah! Happy Isaac, whose father Abraham had spoken with God and was called "the friend of God." God has a habit of loving families; David said "The mercy of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his
righteousness unto children's children; to such as keep his covenant and to those that remember his commandments to do them." Grace does not run in the blood, but often the stream of divine mercy has run side by side with it, and instead of the fathers have been the children whom the Lord has made to be princes in the earth.

Some of you perhaps have fathers and mothers still living whose example you may fitly follow; I charge you never forsake your father's God, or what is tenderer still, the God of your mother. Others of you have parents in heaven; well, they are still yours; that sacred relationship is not broken. You remember your mother's last grasp of your hand when she bade you follow her to heaven; you recollect your father's appeals to you in his long sickness when he pleaded with you to take heed to your ways and not neglect the things of God but seek him in the days of your youth. Well, did you ever hear your father say anything against his God? Did your mother ever in her confiding moments whisper in your ear, "Mary, do not trust in God for he has betrayed your mother's confidence"? No, I know they did not talk like that, for he was their best friend; and he who was such a Friend to the dear old man whom you can never forget, he who cheered the heart of that gracious matron whose sweet face rises before you now--oh, I beseech you, forsake him not! "Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not."

Still, the sweetest part of the text lies in these words, "Thine own friend." I do not think that I can preach on those words; I can take them in my mouth and they are like honey for sweetness, but they must be personally enjoyed to be fully appreciated. There are some precious lines we sometimes sing,-

Now if it be true that Christ is thine own Friend then thou hast spoken with him, thou hast held sweet converse with him, thou hast placed thy confidence in him, thou hast told him thy lost estate and sinfulness, and thou hast reposed in him as thine own Savior. Thou hast put thy cause into his hands, and thou hast left it there. If he be indeed thine own Friend, then he has helped thee. Thou wast a stranger and he has taken thee in; thou wast naked and he has clothed thee; thou wast spiritually sick and in prison and he came to thee and healed thee. Yea, and he wore thy chains and bade thee go free; and he took thy sicknesses and bade thee take his health, and so he made thee whole. Ay, and he restored thee even from the grave, and went into that grave himself, that by his death thou mightest live. Thou knowest that it is so, and day by day thou dost keep up communion with him; thou couldst not live without him, for he is such a Friend to thee, and thou dost rest on him with all thy weight as thou comest up from the wilderness with him, leaning on thy Beloved, "thine own friend."

Nor is the friendship all on one side, though thy side is a very little one. Thou wouldst make it greater if it were in thy power, for thou hast confessed his name, thou hast united thyself with his people, thou lovest to join with them in prayer and praise. Thou art not ashamed to be called by Christ's name as a Christian, or to speak well of that name, and thou desirest to consecrate to him all that thou hast. Better than all this, while thou dost call him Friend he also calls thee friend, as he said to his disciples, "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." Dare I say the words, yet dare I doubt the truth of the words--Jesus is my Friend? There is one we read of in the Bible who was David's captain of the host, and there was another who was David's counselor, but there was one man whom we always call "David's friend, Jonathan;" and I envy him such a title. Yet Jesus gives this name to all those who come and put their trust in him, and so find him to be their Friend.

Now inasmuch as the Lord Jesus is "thine own friend and thy father's friend," the injunction of the text comes to thee with peculiar force: "Forsake him not." Canst thou forsake him? Look at his face all red with bloody sweat for thee; nor his face alone, for he is covered all over with that gory robe wherein he wrought out thy redemption. He that works for bread must sweat, but he that worked for thine eternal life did sweat great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Canst thou forsake him? He stands at Pilate's bar, he is mocked by Herod's men of war, he is scourged by Pilate, and all for thee; and canst thou forsake him? He goes up to the cross of Calvary and the cruel iron is driven through his hands and feet, and there he makes expiation for thy guilt; he is thy Friend even to the ignominy of a felon's death, and canst thou forsake him? He lays his pierced hand on thee and he says, "Wilt thou also go away?" or as he worded it to the twelve, "Ye also will not go away, will you?" So it might be read: "Many of my supposed friends have gone, and so have proved themselves to be not friends but traitors; but ye also will not go away, will you?" And he seems to make an appeal to them with those tearful tender eyes of his--"as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set,"-"Ye also will not go away, will you?"

And when you turn your eye another way and think not merely of the shame your Friend endured for you, but recollect what is an equal proof of his love, that he is not ashamed of you now that he is in his glory; that amidst the throng of angels and cherubim and seraphim that frequent his courts above, he does not disdain to know that he is the brother of these poor earthworms down below, for even there he wears the body which proves him to be our next of kin--ay, and wears the scars which proved that for us he endured the death-penalty itself, and even now he is not ashamed to call us brethren;--as you think of all this can you forsake him? Because you are somewhat better off than you once were, will you leave the little gathering of poor folk with whom you used to worship so happily, and will you go to some more fashionable place where there is music, but little of the music of the name of Jesus--where there is gorgeous architecture it may be, and masquerading, and mummery, and I know not what, but little of the sweet savor of his presence and the dropping of that dew which he always brings with him wherever he comes? Oh, it is a pity, it is a sorrowful pity, it is a meanness that would disgrace a mere worldling, when a man who once confessed Christ and followed him must needs turn his back upon his Lord because his own coat is made of better material than it used to be, and his balance at the bank is heavier! I had almost said--Then let the Judas go, be his own place what it may --it were almost a dishonor to Christ to wish the traitor back. Oh, will ye go away either from the Crucified or from the Glorified, for if ye will forsake this Friend, "Behold, he cometh!" Every hour brings him nearer; the chariots of his glory have glowing axles, and you may almost hear them as they speed toward us; and then what will you do when you have forsaken your own Friend and your father's Friend and you hear him say, "I never knew you; I never knew you"? God grant that it may never be the lot of any of us here present to hear those awful words!

II. Now I pass on to our second head as the Holy Spirit may help me; it is suggested advice: "Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not."

There is to me in the text a suggestion which the text itself does not suggest; that is to say, it suggests something by not suggesting it. The text does not suggest to me that my own Friend and my father's Friend will ever forsake me. It seems to hint that I may forsake him, but it does not suggest that he will ever forsake me and he never will do so. If the Lord had ever meant to forsake me he has had so many good reasons for doing it that he would have done it long ago. The apostle says of those who are journeying to the better country, that "if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned," and certainly our blessed Lord and Master, if he had desired to leave us to perish, had many an opportunity to return to heaven before he died; and since then he has had many occasions when he might have said "I really must withdraw my friendship from you," if he had ever wished to do so. But his love is constant to its line: "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." His is a friendship which never changes. You shall never fall back on him and find that he has withdrawn the arm with which he formerly upheld you. You shall find in life and in death that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Let us be cheered by the assurance that he will never forsake us.

Now let us go on to what the text does suggest in so many words: it suggests to us the question, in what sense can we forsake Christ? Well, there is more than one sense in which a man may forsake Christ. Two passages rise to my mind at this moment: "Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." That was one sort of forsaking; they were all afraid and ran away from their Lord in the hour of his betrayal into the hands of sinners; but it is quite another kind of forsaking when we read: "From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him." The first forsaking was the result of a sudden fear, much to be deplored and very blameworthy, but still only temporary in its effects; the other was the deliberate act of those who in cool blood refused to accept Jesus Christ's doctrine or to follow him any farther, and so turned back and walked no more with him. This last forsaking is incurable. The former one was cured almost as soon as the sudden fear that caused it was removed, for we find John and even Peter following the Master to the judgment hall, and the whole of the disciples soon gathered around him after his resurrection. I would say to you dear friend, "Thine own friend, and thy father's friend forsake not" in any sense at all. Forsake him not even in thy moments of alarm. Pray God then that thou mayest play the man and not forsake him and flee. And then in the other sense, let no quarrel ever arise between you and Christ's most precious truth, so as to lead you deliberately to leave him, for this is the worst of all kinds of forsaking. If we never forsake him in any sense at all, then it is quite certain that we shall never forsake him in the worst sense. I remember a little merriment I had with a good Wesleyan brother, the clerk of the works, when the Tabernacle was being built. He wanted me to go up a ladder right into those lantern lights, and I said "No, thank you, I would rather not." "But" he replied, "I thought you had no fear of falling." "Yes" I answered, "that is quite true, I have no fear of finally falling away; but the belief that the Lord will preserve me does not exercise any evil influence over me, for it keeps me from running unnecessary risks by climbing up ladders; but you good brethren who are so afraid of falling do not seem to show it practically in your conduct, for you go up and down the ladders as nimbly as possible." I have sometimes met with persons who think that if we believe that we shall never fall so as to perish, we are apt to become presumptuous; but we do not, dear brethren. There are other truths that come in to balance this one, so that what they think might come of it is by God's good grace prevented; and I am not quite sure that those who think that they may finally fall and perish are sufficiently impressed with that belief so as to be always careful. The fact is that your carefulness of walk does not depend merely upon your view of this doctrine or that; but it depends upon your state of heart and a great many other things besides, so that you have no reason to judge what you might do if you believed such-and-such a truth, because if you did believe it perhaps you would at the same time be a better man, and the possibility that appears to linger around the doctrine would vanish so far as you are concerned. Let this be the language of all of us who love the Lord as we look up confidently and reverently to him,-

I know that if we are truly the Lord's he will not suffer us to forsake him; but I must have a wholesome fear lest I should forsake him, for who am I that I should be sure that I have not deceived myself? And I may have done so; and after all, may forsake him after the loudest professions and even after the greatest apparent sincerity in avowing that I never will turn away from him.